The 5 Worst Things About a Brutal ‘Survivor’ Season Finale

From the outset, you had to look at this season of Survivor with a whole bunch of side-eye. Subtitled “Game Changers,” the 34th season of the venerable reality competition was going to be another all-star affair. And coming so soon off of the incredibly well-received “Second Chances” season just a year and a half earlier, it was going to have some big expectations to meet. …Then the cast list was announced. Jeff Probst was basically asking for it by calling the season “Game Changers”; it creates an expectation in the fans that you’re going to cast … you know, game changers. Instead, the cast consisted of a small handful of legit legends/fan-favorites (Cirie, Malcolm, Ozzy, three former winners including two-time champ Sandra) and a much larger handful of players who’s biggest contributions to the game were pretty hard to remember. Oh, you know, Troyzan won that one challenge one before finishing 8th. Sierra and Hali were on the same season together and … maybe did something once? Caleb got medically evacuated once. Brad had a wife who was a neat lady.

It was honestly a horror show of a cast. Which isn’t to say that the season was doomed. Survivor has something of a history of its more dubious all-star inclusions coming back as far more dynamic players. Amber Brkich won the first All-Stars season and ended up married to Boston Rob. Parvati Shallow came back after an incredibly underwhelming performance in her first season to win Micronesia and then almost win Heroes vs. Villains. So there was a chance that these players who’d gone under the radar in their previous seasons — as unsuited as they were for a season called “Game Changers” — might still have pulled out something special. And one of them kinda did (we’ll get to her in a moment). But after watching last night’s finale, it was hard not to think that Survivor‘s cavalier casting bit them in the ass. All three of last night’s finalists were among the most underwhelming casting choices at the beginning of the season: Brad Culpepper (15th place in Blood vs. Water), Troyzan Robertson (8th in One World), and Sarah Lacina (11th in Cagayan). All-Stars! If you’d caught wind of a spoiler that revealed those three as the finalists at the beginning of the season, you’d have been forgiven for skipping the season altogether. And while Sarah managed to bust out a game of constant alliance-shifting and chess-piece-maneuvering that earned her a well-deserved win, but regarding the massively unpleasant Brad and the thoroughly ineffective Troyzan, Survivor: Game Changers can probably be safely chalked up as a cautionary tale: when you cast poorly, you risk those poor casting choices lasting all season.

What made last night’s season finale so especially bad?

photo: CBS

It Really Looked Like Brad Was Going to Win

Here’s the deal with Brad Culpepper: he was originally cast on the first “Blood vs. Water” season, meaning he was cast as the football-playing husband of Survivor returnee Monica Culpepper. And while Monica went on to finish second in her season and deliver the all-time greatest plea-falling-on-deaf-jury-ears (“Have you all never met a nice person? Have you all never met a neat lady?”), Brad flamed out incredibly early, the victim of his own overbearing personality and inability to count to a simple majority. Brad was in contention for the “Second Chances” season, but the fan vote didn’t go his way (nor did it for Troyzan — perhaps a sign that Jeff Probst ought to have heeded). So headed into this season, it’s safe to say that Brad was not a fan fave. But he managed to seemingly turn it around in this season’s first half, improving camp decor in some sweet little vignettes, running his alliance competently, and managing to mention how inspired he was by his wife. Were we all wrong about Brad Culpepper this whole time?? … Well, no we weren’t. The last few weeks, when Brad was no longer in control of the game, brought back the Brad of old. Actually, worse. Old Brad was a blowhard; this Brad was nasty, condescending, and sneered at black female contestant Michaela for being a “diva.” In last night’s finale, Brad spent the better part of an hour trying to bully his former ally Tai out of his idols. By the time we hit the final tribal, Brad was one of the more openly hateful contestants in recent memory. And yet up until Jeff Probst was finished reading the votes, it seemed like Brad was going to win, because he didn’t betray as many people as Sarah did. You could say that Sarah prevailing was a happy ending,but by that point, the audience had already been put through the wringer and had to be subject to Jeff Probst’s constant lionization of Brad’s athletic prowess (he won 5 immunity challenges in a single season! Only Jeff’s very favorite contestants do that!). We’re never going to get those traumatic moments back.

Cirie Was the Only Winner We’d Have Cheered For, And She Was Done So Dirty

The finale opened with an unwieldy 6 players remaining, but really, only one player who fans were actively rooting for. Cirie Fields was playing her fourth season of Survivor, perhaps the best player who’s never won. She’s been a step away from the finale twice before, and if she’d have made it to a jury either time, she’d have won. That probably would have been the case this season, too, given the respect and reverence the rest of the cast (and Probst) showed her, even if Jeff could get a good bit syrupy on the rags-to-riches-ness of her journey. Which is why it was absolutely crushing that Cirie was eliminated in a bizarre tribal council where all five other players played an immunity of some sort, meaning Cirie as the lone un-immune player was eliminated by default. It was an eye-popping moment but a soul-deflating end for a player the audience was so invested in. It was also the result of one of the big weaknesses of this “Game Changers” season: too many advantages. Throughout the season, five hidden immunity idols were found (three by Tai alone), Sarah found an extra-vote advantage, and Sierra found a “legacy advantage” that she then gave to Sarah. And while hidden idols have always thrown a bit of unpredictability into the game, thus glut of advantages never really did anything — JT got voted out without ever even bringing his to tribal; Tai consistently refused to play his; Troyzan never had to because he was a non-factor. In fact, the only players done in by idols this season were Cirie and Malcolm, two of the most popular players in the game. Congratulations, Survivor, you played yourself.

Ozzy Ruined the Jury Portion By Singing Odes to a Statue of Himself

By the time Brad, Sarah, and Troyzan reached the jury, the dynamic was clear: Sarah was the strategy choice, Brad was the jock choice for people who were feeling burned by Sarah, and Troyzan was the one with no shot at getting even one vote. Probst switched up the jury format this season into something more akin to an open forum, where the jurors asked questions at will, followed up, and debated among themselves. It was honestly pretty great! Until Ozzy decided that his one and only criteria for winning Survivor was athletic prowess, and that Brad was the only player who’d completed a truly heroic journey. In the jury’s most obnoxious speech, Ozzy grandstanded that Brad played a “cleaner” game than Sarah because winning all those immunities meant he “didn’t have to get his hands dirty, showing there was a way to win that was “more clean and more loyal.” Which, yeah, when you keep winning immunity every time, it’s pretty easy to make it to the end without getting your hands dirty. Survivor has evolved past the point where big dumb jocks get to ride immunity streaks to the end and win it all, which is honestly one of the best things about Survivor. Somehow this hasn’t gotten through Ozzy’s mane of hair, as his self-serving praise of Brad (which really was praise for himself, since he also was a player with great challenge skills and an incredibly poor social game) showed. And the less said about Debbie hopping onto this particular “honor above betrayal” line of bluster, the better.

Jeff Varner Ruined the Reunion By Plugging His Book

The one interesting thing at the reunion — besides Jeff Probst explaining how the show would break a tie in the final jury vote, a mystery that had existed in the fandom for years — was seeing Zeke get to speak on the aftermath of getting outed as transgender by his tribe-mate Jeff Varner at mid-season. Zeke spoke eloquently and inspirationally about how pleased he was by the reactions of friends, fans, and the world at large, and about how it’s inspired him to try things he’d previously closed off to himself. It was rather lovely. And then we got to hear Jeff Varner, who mostly said the right things about contrition and lessons learned. But Varner can’t help himself — never could, really — and in his last statement, he managed to throw in a plug for the book he’s writing. Guhhhhhh-ross.

Next Season Looks Just as Dubious

The theme for next season: Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers. Which sounds like a thin gloss on the White-Collar/Blue-Collar/No-Collar theme from a few seasons ago. The idea is to cast tribes of people divided on the basis of the kind of work they do. Heroes are soldiers and fire-fighters and such; healers are doctors and, uh, yoga instructors; rather disappointingly, hustlers are being defined as athletes rather than, like, pool sharks and gay prostitutes. These divisions never seem to do anything but allow Jeff Probst to harp on stereotypes about different types of lifestyles. Ultimately, it’s going to come down to casting. Cast good players with good personalities and all will be well. “Millennials vs. Gen-X” sounded like an awful idea, but it was cast so well that it turned out to be amazing. The lesson can also be applied, conversely, to “Game Changers”: cast poorly and reap the ill rewards.